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French pretensions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2017

Keith Davidson
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Extract

The ‘English’ have an ambiguous relationship with the language of their nearest neighbour, France. There is a history, ‘1066 and all that’. Christmas Day 2016 saw the 950th anniversary of the crowning at Westminster Abbey of the French Duke William of Normandy as King of England (not, please note, of ‘Britain’); William having defeated King Harold – and so the very last ‘English’ monarch – at the battle of Hastings. (The other ‘nations’ of these European off-shore islands have different trajectories.) Sooner or later the English at least would have to come to terms with French.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 2 - 4
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

Arden, P. S. 1951. First Readings in Old English. Wellington: New Zealand University Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, F. N. 1957. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walter, H. 1988. Le Français dans Tous les Sens. Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont.Google Scholar